1. Field
One embodiment of the invention relates to a resolution enhancement processing control technique for moving image data, suitably applied to a personal computer or the like, which includes a special playback function of converting a standard definition (SD) image stored in, e.g., a digital versatile disc (DVD) into a High Definition (HD) image and displaying the HD image in an enlarged scale.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, personal computers of various types such as a notebook type and desktop type have prevailed widely. Many personal computers of this type play back moving image data by software, and software including a resolution enhancement function of generating image data having a higher resolution than that of input image data appears recently. Various schemes associated with this resolution enhancement have begun to be proposed (for example, see Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2006-221221).
In conventional resolution enhancement processing, the number of pieces of edge (region where luminance values change steeply) information in one frame or the number of pixels, which are to undergo image-quality enhancement processing and are obtained from the edge information, are used intact as the number of execution times of image-quality enhancement image processing. Hence, the processing time varies depending on the number of pieces of edge information. When a frame includes many edges, the processing time exceeds a target processing time, thus causing frame omission or display delay.
Likewise, depending on the number of flat parts (regions where a change in luminance value is small), the processing time also varies, and the processing time exceeds a target processing time in some cases.